GUPTA SCRIPT

any of a group of Indian alphabetic writing systems (sometimes modified to represent syllables instead of single sounds) derived from a northern Indian alphabet of the 4th6th century AD. The ruling Gupta state at that time gave the script its name. It was developed out of Brahmi and was spread with the Gupta empire over large areas of conquered territory, with the result that the Gupta alphabet was the ancestor (for the most part via Devanagari) of most later Indian scripts. The original Gupta alphabet had 37 letters, including 5 vowels, and was written from left to right. Four main subtypes of Gupta script developed from the original alphabet: eastern, western, southern, and Central Asian. The Central Asian Gupta can be further divided into Central Asian Slanting Gupta and its Agnean and Kuchean variants and Central Asian Cursive Gupta, or Khotanese. A western branch of eastern Gupta gave rise to the Siddhamatrka script (c. AD 500), which, in turn, evolved into the Devanagari alphabet (c. AD 700), the most widespread of the modern Indian scripts.